1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to percussion instrument hardware.
2. Description of Prior Art
Percussion instruments have long been used in the musical field such as orchestral music, concert, band music and marching music and typically includes a drum, drum set or bass drum. The bass drum is used to mark time and project tempo. The drum can be utilized to provide a basic beat and its use can vary from being merely a basic time keeping medium to being a melodic voice in conjunction with other parts of the symbol set. In classical music, the bass drum often punctuates a musical impact.
A bass drum is played using a pedal-operated mallet or beater operated by the drummer's foot. It is believed that William F. Ludwig made the first bass drum pedal workable in about 1909, paving the way for the modern drum kit. A bass drum pedal operates much the same as a hi-hat where a foot plate is depressed to bring a “beater” or mallet into the drum membrane. A spring tension typically controls the amount of pressure needed to strike and the amount of recoil upon release.
A drummer is involved in many different techniques for carrying out his or her contribution which may involve numerous different actuations of the pedal to generate the desired acoustics. Examples of acoustic drum pedals appear in U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,356 to Duffy, U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,523 to Currier and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,499 to Livingston.
Drum pedal devices have been proposed which control synthesizers to produce synthesized percussive sounds. Over the years electronic percussion instruments such as drum synthesizers and electronic drums, which convert acoustic sounds or vibrations into synthesized percussive sounds, have proliferated in the field of music. Pedals have been proposed to control production of synthesized percussive sounds. One such device is incorporated in a conventional pedal and, includes a sounding block or trigger mounting on a vibration pick up. When the beater strikes the trigger, the pick up generates an electrical signal which is transferred to synthesizer to produce the synthesized percussive sound. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,025 to Currier.
Problems have been encountered with a shock resulting from the impact with the synthesizer trigger and from reverberation which may affect the quality of the percussive sound. In addressing this issue, a pedal has been proposed which includes a hinged plate with an elevated end mounting on the underside thereof in cantilever fashion a leaf spring which carries on the free extremity thereof an actuator button intended to, upon depression of the free extremity of the pedal, contact an electrical transducer for generating an electrical signal which may be processed to produce the desired musical tone. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,744,279 to Livingston. Devices of this type, while effective to produce the particular results, are relatively expensive to manufacture and can tend to, with repeated action, wear the face of the transducer.
One highly successful bass drum pedal device includes a pedal hinged on one end to a bass and having its free extremity biased upwardly and connected through a series of levers to a drum beater to drive the beater against the drum membrane upon depression of the pedal itself. This pedal device, sold by the assignee of the present application under the designation Electronic Upgrade Kit, includes a design of the general type is shown my U.S. Pat. No. 5,301,592. The pedal device includes a striker carried telescopically on a striker body and biased downwardly toward a transducer by means of a coil spring but elevatable away from the transducer by means of a spring biased arm such that, when the pedal is depressed the striker will be lowered to drive the plunger against the surface of the transducer to actuate such transducer. While this device has enjoyed great commercial success, it suffers the shortcoming that the striker tends to wear out the contact surface on the transducer thus shortening the service life and detrimentally effecting the musical tones, sometimes further adulterated by excessive rebound of the striker from the transducer.